The League of Gentlemen

Basil Dearden's The League of Gentlemen (1960) is an excellent film. Dearden mixes an enjoyable crime story with a subversive edge.

Colonel J.G.H. Hyde (Jack Hawkins) has recently been drummed out of the British Army, and decides to get his own back by organizing a bank robbery. He recruits several fellow veterans for the job: Race (Nigel Patrick), a cultured cynic and black marketeer; Lexy (Richard Attenborough), an ace radiographer; Rupert (Terence Alexander), a sad sack cuckolded by his materialstic wife; Mycroft (Roger Livesey), a pornographer turned priest; Porthill (Bryan Hill), drummed out for an apparent war crime on Cyprus; Stevens (Kieron Moore), an outed homosexual; and Weaver (Norman Bird), an explosive expert. Hyde believes that the authorities will be no match for the ex-soldiers, and indeed their planning and heist seem to succeed brilliantly. Unfortunately, the devil is in the details.

The League of Gentlemen is a cracking heist film that gets everything right. British entries in the genre (The Day They Robbed the Bank of England, The Lavender Hill Mob) generally rely on cunning rather than the violence of American counterparts, and this film is no exception. A preliminary heist to steal arms from an army depot (shades of The Dirty Dozen?) is pulled off through bluff and cunning, our protagonists easily outwitting gormless garrison troops. Bryan Forbes's script provides its share of droll humor, with careful, inventive plotting: the heist goes off without a hitch, and things unravel in a clever and unexpected way.

League is also noteworthy for its edgy content. The opening, of Hyde creeping out from a manhole into a Rolls-Royce, sets the subversive tone. The story is a damning indictment of post-war England: its military heroes have been forgotten or deliberately cast off, forced into menial jobs in an impersonal welfare state. There is overt sexual inneundo in characters' dealings with women, and Hyde gets a big laugh with a surprising profanity. Stevens is openly homosexual, subject to slurs from his colleagues and blackmail from criminals. (Dearden built upon this in his next film, Victim.) 1960 audiences must have been jolted.

Jack Hawkins is ideally cast, subverting a career's worth of military roles (Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia) in a stroke. Droll Nigel Patrick (The Sound Barrier) and chummy Richard Attenborough (10 Rillington Place) provide a perfect foil to Hawkins's professionalism. Terence Alexander (The Day of the Jackal), Norman Bird, Bryan Forbes (The Guns of Navarone), Kieron Moore (The Day They Robbed the Bank of England) and an antiquated Roger Livesey (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp) play other members of the team. Attentive viewers can spy Nigel Green (Zulu) and Oliver Reed (Lion of the Desert) in early roles.

The League of Gentlemen has just about everything you'd want from a heist film. Its clever plotting and edgy thematic material make it among the genre's best.